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I've recently seen a new side of A.I.. A younger person in my extended family doesn't do much reading or writing outside of social media posts, and would probably never try to write an essay or poem on their own. They've been singing original song lyrics composed, on their instructions, by ChatGPT.

I'm afraid that for a moment I thought that this was somehow too bad, that it was a cheap imitation of the genuine experience of learning to express one's own thoughts and feelings in original words. Now I think this was wrong, though.

Not everyone can write poems or lyrics, or essays or arguments, or whatever. I don't mean that not everyone can write to some standard of excellence. If someone composes something that they themselves like, then that's great. The problem is that not everyone can write to their own satisfaction. A lot of people's ability to appreciate language outstrips their ability to produce it themselves.

Good poetry or prose, that expresses difficult things really well, can be like a second language, even in one's first language. I can appreciate far better German than I can write. I understand it and recognize how well it is done, but if I were to try to produce it myself, I'd think of six different alternative phrasings without being sure that any of them were even correct, let alone knowing which was the best of them, and I probably wouldn't think at all of the really best way to express my idea. And now I'm thinking that it must be like that for a lot of people like this one family member of mine, even in their mother tongue.

At least for now there are limits to how well chatbots write. They tend to ramble and pad, and they don't write anything stunning. They can write better than a lot of people, however. Or rather: they can write better than a lot of people used to be able to write. Now all those people can write at least that well, by using a chatbot.

There's a lot to worry about, in chatbots taking jobs away from humans. We do also have to think of the other side of this, though. When steam looms took jobs from weavers, skilled craftspeople who used to earn good livings working at home became poor—but poor people of all kinds also got better clothes, because clothing got cheap.

Writers will be out of work, because now anyone who can read is a writer. It's easy to see the loss to the writers, but the gain to everyone else may be really enormous. Maybe A.I. will be the jetpacks that the future was supposed to bring everyone.

It's rather amusing that just an hour before you posted this thread, you were on my thread referring to me as a chatbot. I believe I have truly tapped into your inner self and awakened some long-buried feelings that you need to come to terms with.

Regardless, A.I. represents the future, and it is an inevitability. I genuinely believe it will benefit humanity as a whole. Billions of people will gain from A.I., as it will enable them to learn anything they desire, even while residing in the most remote areas of the planet.

When Neuralink becomes a reality for humans, the entire human race will be transformed into something unimaginable to us, a belief I hold strongly. I believe it could lead to a future where attending school is no longer necessary for anyone. We will have the capability to download information directly through chips implanted in our brains.

Popular culture itself is an example of A.I.. The stuff that sells most in writing, art, or music, is the most predictable stuff that A.I. absolutely competes in. If James Patterson isn't rich enough from an army of ghost writers contractually bound to follow simple formulas, A.I. could take his business to the next level -- if it doesn't wipe him out, now that the average person can do exactly what he can do. I don't mean to criticize it, averages will dominate, as was recently proven to me elsewhere, and there's no escape. A music channel I tune into now and again sometimes runs through a list of the world's top ten songs. Music gets worse and worse, as technology creates global listening pools of billions, and the number 1 song must be so bland that it resonates just enough with the largest number of people over all cultures. The wisdom of that large crowd is exactly what A.I. will satisfy.

I do think A.I. can exist in creative synergy. Maybe you're an entrepreneur, you've got a product to market and A.I. can write your sales page or create the entire website. here's a plug to the latest output of my favorite ambient music channel. Lots of producers in this space. If you're a musician, you don't also need to be an artist or pay one, you can create your own A.I. visuals to go along with your song. If it's one of those weekend mornings where I'm up at 4:30 and do chores until late morning, I might route my video output to the television, turn off the lights, and take a nap to this stuff.

If you're an artist, you can use A.I. music as the background to a video showing off your art.

As far as chabots taking people's jobs, billions and billions have poured in to accomplish this, I will fear it the day an A.I. agent is useful for something. At most, A.I. creates a more complicated barrier to get through in order to get real help with something, which in some cases, might be the point. My company has an A.I. agent we all have, I don't think it's ever provided me with anything useful. The bug spray company I use is essentially an A.I./cloud company. The back end of the business is handled now by cloud-like services as much as possible to manage an army of human foot soldiers who do the spraying. It's horrible, and real help never happens until you can get to a person and even then it's questionable.

It seems very analogous to the early internet and computing revolution in the 1990s. It allowed people to do more from home, run businesses, sell stuff on eBay, become YouTubers, etc.

I think A.I. will be a similarly useful and revolutionary tool.

People have trouble ascertaining which A.I. variation Hound springs from.